Pretty incredible if you ask me... https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/american-orthodoxy-going-pro-gay/ The relevant parts: "By now, it’s crystal clear that whenever theological liberals invite theological conservatives to “dialogue” about sexual ethics, what’s really being negotiated is the terms under which conservatives can be persuaded to surrender. If there is a dialogue to be had among Christians, it’s how best to proclaim and to help people live out the countercultural truth about sex and the body in these post-Christian, erotomaniacal times. That’s not the dialogue that interests theological liberals; “dialogue” is what they want up until the point where they hold power, in which case the dialogue is over, because the Holy Spirit has done something new in the church, and we cannot give bigotry any quarter. There’s a liberal website called Orthodoxy In Dialogue, which is exactly what you think it is. A couple of weeks ago, there appeared a controversial essay from an Antiochian Orthodox priest in Wichita, which is known for being a conservative jurisdiction. In the essay, Father Aaron Warwick calls for the liberalization of Orthodox pastoral practice regarding homosexuality. An Orthodox reader e-mailed the piece to me, with real dismay. This paragraph from the Warwick essay caused me to do a double-take: In reality, I believe we should also accept that, like most heterosexuals, most homosexuals will find lifelong abstinence to be impracticable. In such cases, it is my strong conviction that we should encourage homosexuals to find a lifelong partner. While I understand this offends the sensibility of many Orthodox Christians, I again point to how our Church has dealt with the sin of divorce and remarriage. Namely, we do not enforce the strict legal and scriptural injunctions of our Church; rather, we act in a pastoral manner, allowing people an opportunity to continue working out their salvation within the Church. We never ask a remarried individual to eventually, some day leave their new spouse so their sin will not persist. We simply recognize this person needs compassion and a chance to do as well as they possibly can. Furthermore, we realize that the best way to encourage this is for an individual to belong to some form of community that requires mutual submission and the restriction of one’s sexual life to focus on no more than one person.
Ah, well. Most people will find lifelong abstinence from lying to be impracticable, too. So the good priest should advise them to try limiting themselves to lies that hurt the minimum number of people, while they work out their salvation within the Church. Gee, maybe these people should exercise a little self-control? Better still, get born again so the Holy Spirit can help them resist temptations to sin? In my own experience, having sex with anyone I wasn't married to (even before marriage) was difficult, indeed almost impossible, because the Holy Spirit was advising me so strongly to 'not go there' and my conscience dampened the ardor too much to follow through. Wanton lust is a very selfish act devoid of agape love. If we truly love the other person, we want what's best for them (unselfishly) and will not dishonor them by leading them into sin and using their bodies for our own pleasure.
It wasn't too long ago that people were telling us that Orthodoxy was somehow supernaturally protected from the liberalism that has infected Western churches
Hmm, well. I think I've heard it said that the constancy of the liturgy, keeping us praying the same way always, keeps everyone believing the same way always. But the Romans tried that (their latin liturgy varied little for many centuries) and some of their beliefs still became wonky. And on the other side of things, we see groups (like the Episcopalians) who drifted in their beliefs rather suddenly and rapidly; and sometimes the groups simply change their liturgies to match their drift but still claim that their liturgy will keep them from error. The only way Christians could really stay on track would be through an intimate channel of communication with the Holy Spirit, such that they are truly guided by Him (hearing His will and adhering to it). For God cannot change, and He is able to keep people from straying if they be willing and obedient. But we humans are a headstrong lot.
The answer is no. Orthodoxy in Dialogue is run by an extremely liberal group of theologians rejected by the mainstream hierarchy. Homosexuality is considered a sin in the Orthodox churches, a terrible sin, and always has been. The idea of a gay marriage in an Oriental Orthodox church is unthinkable due to cultural values, and even in the Eastern Orthodox where some jurisdictions (namely, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, including its autonomous sunsidiaries like the Finnish Orthodox Church, the illegal and uncanonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine, and the Orthodox Church in America, where there exists a minority faction of pro-gay clergy, it is still impossible, because such a church would instantly be anathematized by Antioch, Jerusalem, Serbia, Cyprus, Bolovia, Greece, Albania, Czech-Slovakia, Poland, Moscow and ROCOR, Alexandria and Romania. A few years ago an OCA priest, Fr. Robert Arrakis of Boston, published an article in the OCA’s youth magazine which was interpreted as being pro-gay, and every single OCA priest in the Diocese of Texas and the South wrote to rebuke him, as did hundreds of others. If a homosexual incident does occur, it will most likely happen in the state-dominated Church of Finland or the uncanonical Estonian Orthodox Church, both of which are autonomous churches nominally under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The EP has angered virtually every other bishop and is on pretty thin ice, but even here I am not worried; the only morally wishy washy Finnish bishop is Metropolitan Ambrosius. The Archbishop of Finland has made it clear he is opposed to gay marriage. The Estonian church is uncanonical, as Estonia belongs to the canonical territory of Moscow, and more than half of the Orthodox in Estonia go to canonical parishes. These two autonomous churches are the only churches in Eastern Orthodoxy to use the Gregorian Calendar for Pascha. ~ There are five liturgical episcopal churches where I think one is safe from homosexuality: traditional and continuing Anglican churches such as GAFCON and the Anglican Province of Christ the King, confessional Lutheran churches like the LCMS, Eastern Orthodox churches, Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Assyrian and Ancient Church of the East. I do worry about Rome these days however
I think all churches that preserve the apostolic faith are supernaturally protected, including Orthodoxy and traditional Anglicanism. Our Lord promised the Gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church. Schisms with heretics have always happened and Eastern Orthodoxy is no exception. In the 18th, 19th and 20th century the Russian Orthodox Church had to deal with terrible schisms (mainly resulting from Czarist and Soviet interference): the horrific Mutilators, or Skoptsky, the quasi-Unitarian Doukhobors, who emigrated to Western Canada in the 1870s, thanks to the funding of Leo Tolstoy, where they for some decades harassed the locals by parading in the nude, and lastly the dreaded ultra liberal Rennovationists, who were sponsored by the Soviet government.
Good to hear that about Orthodox Churches. I also heard on a facebook page about some intercommunion between OO's and Anglicans. Heard anything about that?
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/me...f-the-holy-spirit-dublin-agreed-statement.pdf http://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenism/ecumenical-dialogues/oriental-orthodox.aspx
It already exists between the Syriac and Antiochian Orthodox, amd between the Greek and Coptic Churches of Alexandria. I have also heard of Copts receiving communion at a ROCOR parish and Assyrians at a Finnish Orthodox parish. What I also want to see is full communion between Anglicans and EO/OO churches; limited inter communion existed in the US in the early 20th century when St. Rafael of Brooklyn directed Antiochians who could not find a parish to take communion at Episcopalian parishes; I see no reason why such a policy could not apply to traditionalist Orthodox Anglicans of today. Indeed the whole reason Eastern/Oriental Orthodox-Anglican dialogue towards actual communion stopped was because of the horrific decision of the ECUSA to ordain women in the 1970s. If it hadn’t been for that, the Eastern / Oriental Orthodox and Anglicans would be one communion today. Because traditional Anglicanism is really another way of saying “Western Orthodox Catholic,” the Protestantism of Anglican divines like Archbishop Laud having recalled that which Rome had forgotten.